Why do you suppose Chicago is the media's punching bag? (generations, illegal)

[Bluefox]

The obvious answer I've heard is that Obama is from Chicago, Chicago has restrictive gun laws, etc. Basically it's a right-wing agenda and Chicago is a convenient target to make liberal policies look like a failure. But this year the 4th of July violence made headlines on msnbc.com and cnn.com but interestingly not foxnews.com. Why would that be? Even BBC news had an article about it.

Also, it was only tangentially mentioned in each of the articles that the shootings and homicides were actually down from last year's holiday weekend. I wonder if this is going to just be an annual news headline, until there are no shootings and no deaths? Why wouldn't they include shootings and homicides that occurred over the holiday weekend across the country? Why is Chicago always framed as one of the most dangerous cities in the country, when statistics clearly indicate otherwise?

[Arne Bjornson]

Well Chicago is the 3rd biggest city.
The most dangerous cities like Detroit, Oakland and St. Louis are much smaller and are basically irrelevant.

The media (especially right wing media) would prefer to zing NYC and LA but both places cleaned up their crime so much they needed a different target.

[Drover]

Because it's a big city that makes big raw numbers. Chances are that at least one person was killed in St. Louis or Newark over the weekend, which would equal Chicago's incidence of murder per capita. But those won't make the news because 10 killings makes for better click-bait headlines than one.

[steeps]

It is CNN that did it most. Anderson Cooper has a anti-Chicago bias too.

[jdiddy]

It's click bait at this point.

[AMWChicago]

Chicago is the heart of America and therefore represents a lot what the US stands for. It is historically a blue collar city with a white collar present and future, making it relatable. A lot like earlier posts, Chicago is well known and popular. No one cares of St. Louis. So you go to Chicago. I like to say "There's the West Coast, the East Coast, and Chicago".

So when you have LA and NY, cities that are constantly displayed and "shown off" in movies and TV, it only makes sense to attack Chicago because it isn't seen often in film and thus more of an unknown. So the media can have a field day, because no one knows what Chicago is really like. People I know that aren't from Chicago ask "If it's "dangerous" to walk around", but people who I know that have gone to Chicago know that it isn't all crime and drugs. Chicago is misunderstood. And I think more positive exposure though film would be beneficial in changing this. It's unfair how the media constantly barrages Chicago and doesn't allow the people and the city to speak for itself.

[williepotatoes]

Chicago gets the reputation because it's earned. We're a gun-toting gangster city and we have been that way for decades. Chicago leads the nation in confiscated illegal firearms by a large margin. Seven times more guns are confiscated here than in NYC. Our gangs are as much as four generations deep now and the wild west mentality has become permanently sutured into the street culture.

The irony is that things are actually better now than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Back then we didn't have the vast techno-news galaxy that exists today to spread the story. And besides cities like NYC and LA were even worse off, so they ruled the headlines because of it.

[prairiestate]

I really get tired of hearing about how things were so much worse 30 years ago. Yes, that's true, and it was true nationwide. Then crime started falling through the 90's. In the 2000's, crime continued to fall in most cities. Chicago was an exception, where crime plateaued, then remained pretty constant ever since. That's why New York and LA have far less crime per capita today than Chicago.

Yet all we ever hear from Rahm and defensive Chicagoans (which seem to be the majority), is that things couldn't be better. After all, look at crime stats 25 years ago! Obviously things are great here, right?
Well, not so much. Compared to other large cities, and compared to national trends, Chicago is mired in a serious crime problem that it can't escape from, yet everyone wants to bury their head in the sand.

Who cares that crime was so much worse in the early 90's? That's true for all cities. Chicago hasn't seen the same continuous improvement as it's peers, though.

[probablyimnotsure]

Because New York and Los Angeles have much better crime stats and they are significantly more populated than Chicago.

[NealIRC]

I wonder if Chicago's segregatedness plays a role, too.

Or maybe because these news companies do not like the past 2 mayors.